The Legacy of Francesca Woodman.
Francesca Woodman was born in Denver in 1958. She was the daughter of two American artists and spent most of her life surrounded by artists, writers, playwrights, and art critics. At the age of 13, Woodman began taking along the camera that her father, a photographer himself, had given her. She studied at the prominent Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where the established photographer Aaron Siskind became one of her teachers. Here she was also heavily inspired by Doug Prince, a tutor whose work centered around the complex printing of composite negatives. During that time, is when she was able to immerse herself more in-depth into the medium. She is known for her black and white pictures, whose primary subject was always the female sex. Despite her short career, which ended with her suicide at the age of 22, Woodman produced an impressive and vast body of work.
Although Woodman used different cameras and film formats during her career, most of her photographs were taken with medium format cameras producing 2-1/4 by 2-1/4 inch (6x6 cm) square negatives. Woodman created at least 10,000 negatives, which her parents now keep. Woodman's estate, which is managed by Woodman's parents, consists of over 800 prints, of which only around 120 images had been published or exhibited as of 2006. Most of Woodman's prints are 8 by 10 inches (20 by 25 cm) or smaller, which "works to produce an intimate experience between viewer and photograph".2 In her time at the Rhode Island School of Design, she produced videotapes related to the themes of her photographs, showing her naked and comparing her torso to images of classical statues. Their range was anywhere between 23 seconds to 3 minutes and 15 seconds in length.
Many historians and critics have written about Woodman's many influences, and she often sought inspiration in the works of André Breton, Man Ray, Duane Michals, and Max Klinger. Woodman found insight in Victorian heroes and gothic fiction, many of which feature the trials and tribulations of leading female figures, which she identified with significantly. She even studied surrealism extensively and used psychoanalysis to construct her ominous photographs. Guided by her agonized mind, myth and reality fused and materialized into her artistic practice. Woodman once said, "Real things do not frighten me, just the ones in my mind do."
This image titled "Self-Portrait at Thirteen" was taken in 1972 and is one of the first photographs she took. I find this photograph to be a testament to her artistic maturity that seems to be inherent to her from an early age. In the image, we see a figure on the upper left quadrant; we know to be Woodman because of the title. She was refusing to adapt to the century's old portrait format and chooses to turn her face away from us, only catching the back of her hair. The space around her, clearly indoors, is composed of half-seen elements such as a door, a bench or couch upon which she sits and an empty chair. One of her hands is extended to us as she holds something that can be agreed to be a shutter release cable that we see below her seat. However, because of the unique lighting, it seems as if she is holding the light like she is bending it to her will almost like magic. Assuming that because the natural light is coming from windows around the room, seconds earlier or moments later this photograph would probably have not been successful. There are extreme lights and deep shadows that surround the photograph that makes it seem like a weird dream and leave her body in the shadows. It seems like she was always conscious of matters such as composition, lighting, and positioning of the camera. She made these photographs is pure exploration; her father being a photographer himself, probably ignited her curiosity and made her dared the medium. This is a show of many of the compositional elements and overall themes that later take hold of Woodman's practice.
Woodman always sought to conjure a mystical atmosphere and create a visual poetic epic that tried to make sense of the human condition. Things like life, death, loss, and change were ever-present in her photographs. This image titled "Untitled, Boulder, Rhode Island" we are taken outdoors into nature and find a thick tree trunk whose roots venture into the body of water before it. Intertwined with the roots in the water, there is a body of a woman, who again is Woodman herself. She often used herself as the main character in her photographs, which she said was "pure convenience." However, I cannot help but see the implication of self-exploration. Her mind was hoping to find herself amidst the silver halides. In the background, past the tree, we see what appears to be gravestones, thus revealing that the location is a burial site. The photographs are high in contrast, yet there is a wide range of tonalities and enough light that makes the objects around the image identifiable. Many critics associate this image with the myth of the Greek goddess, Daphne, who, under an attack, transformed herself into a tree as a way to preserve her life. Others find a connection to Ophelia, the Shakespearian character, who fell from a tree overhanging the river and there floated until her death. Woodman's love for mythology and gothic literature makes these valuable theories that help explain what she was thinking upon making this photograph. What we do know for sure is that she always presented herself in a range of complex characters with variable dimensions and depth to them.
Throughout her short career, Woodman frequently photographed female forms in empty interior spaces. Although in most of these she is the main subject rarely can we call these photographs self-portraits? She used her body to embody lore and delusion. "Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976" is no exception to this theme. The photograph, as the title suggests, was taken in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1976, and is one of a series of similar images. This time we see Woodman back in an interior that has mostly been cropped, and we are left with what seems to be a female body wearing nothing but shoes, on the upper right quadrant, sitting in a chair. The room seems to heavily deteriorate with an impression diagonally placed on the floor that outlines a human body. Research has found that "Woodman created the dark impression on the floor by lying on her back in photosensitive powder scattered over the floorboards. The areas of powder exposed to light turned white, while those in shadow turned black. This is known as a 'shadowgraph.' One of Woodman's videos shows her undertaking the process for this series.”3 The image carries harsh tonalities that make vivid contrasts, which are typical in Woodman's work; however, this image gives us an endless amount of gray nuances. She was interested in the limits of representation; the artist's body is habitually cropped, endlessly concealed, and never wholly captured. She was able to convey a relationship between fragility and vulnerability concerning constructed notions of femininity.
The impression on the floor seems to be a mirror image of the woman sitting in the chair and alludes to a feeling imprisoned within, even death. Julia Fiore writes, “We will never know how Francesca Woodman’s work might have developed. But the prolific body of photographs that she left behind, though fully realized, speaks to a young artist finding her way. In turn, Woodman laid the foundation for women to self-inquiry by turning the camera on themselves.”4
Francesca Woodman left a powerful and often disturbing legacy that will be remembered for the rest of the time in the history of photography. She was able to unfold the struggles of the mind, which are often left untouched, and it was precisely the unconscious search for herself that led to her self-destruction. On one of her last journal entries, Woodman writes: “This action that I foresee has nothing to do with melodrama,” she wrote in her final journal entry. “I was (am?) not unique but special. This is why I was an artist…I was inventing a language for people to see the everyday things that I also see…and show them something different…Nothing to do with not being able ‘to take it in the big city or w/ self-doubt or because my heart is gone. And not to teach people a lesson. Simply the other side.”
Bibliography
The Art Story, Francesca Woodman, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/woodman-francesca/
Wikipedia, Francesca Woodman, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Woodman
Tate, Francesca Woodman, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/woodman-untitled-providence-rhode-island-ar00352
Artsy, Reevaluating Francesca Woodman, Whose Early Death Haunts Her Groundbreaking Images, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-reevaluating-francesca-woodman-early-death-haunts-groundbreaking-images
Times, Retrospective: Looking Back on Francesca Woodman’s Prolific Career, https://time.com/16179/retrospective-looking-back-on-francesca-woodmans-prolific-career/